"Kiddie," he faltered, "you're making a new man of me. You found me when I was lost. You blazed a new trail for me, an' I kept to it. I shall keep to it until the very end."
During the rest of that same day, while Rube Carter was occupied in the work of unloading the canoe and setting the cabin in order, Kiddie engaged himself in opening his delayed correspondence and writing letters.
Many of the letters he opened were business communications from his lawyers in London, requiring immediate attention. Some were letters from friends in England, regretting his absence and imploring him to return. The one that he left to the last was addressed in a familiar handwriting, and he read it with close interest.
MY DEAR COUSIN HARRY,—
Do you remember once when we sat together in the billiard-room at St. Olave, and you were yarning to me about Buckskin Jack and Gideon Birkenshaw and the Pony Express? I said something about wishing I could go out West again and enjoy some such adventures as yours, and you said: "Well, you'd better come out with me." I don't know what I answered, but I believe you thought I didn't quite take to the idea, and you went off suddenly without repeating the invitation.
Now, however, I'm not going to wait to be asked. Since you didn't take me with you, I am going to come out on my own. I want to see you again, Kiddie. I want to be your chum for a few weeks, and share your life in that shack in the Bush that you were going to build. By this time you ought to be pining for a companion.
There are so many things I want to do and to see, with you to teach me. Golf and tennis and billiards are all very well, but I yearn for the wide spaces and the wilds. I want to see a real herd of buffalo and a pack of wolves, and to go bear hunting, to do some trapping, and to see some Indians—not the imitation article that hangs around on railway stations wearing breeches and a top hat, but the real noble savage, the wigwam Redskin with painted face and feathered head-dress. But more than all, I want to live in the same world of adventure with you. So I am coming out West. Before you get this letter I shall have started, and some day very soon you may meet me riding along the trail on my way to Sweetwater Bridge.
Then when I have had enough of it, I count upon your coming back home to England with me. This is imperative. There are heaps of important things waiting for you to do and to see to here.
Always your affectionate cousin,
HAROLD FRITTON.